[amirthfultehrani]

Originally Posted by rantanplan

What exactly is the benefit for you? Having an LLM write a synopsis in easy to understand language for you is the the same as reading the plot of a novel on wikipedia and thinking that this will replace reading a novel or watching a movie. To understand these concepts, you need to figure them out yourself, having an LLM do the work for you is defeating the purpose. This is a sure way to mess up your critical thinking skills.

Thank you for raising such important points, rantanplan. I completely agree that relying on an LLM to "do the work for you" (e.g., simply generating summaries or explanations without further engagement
would indeed be counterproductive to developing two things we desperately need in our world: critical thinking skills and true understanding. That was never the intended purpose for my suggestion.

The benefit, as I have envisioned and experienced, is not to replace the act of reading, or the act of critically thinking, but instead about reducing friction and accelerating the learning process when faced with challenging text.

I urge you to please consider these scenarios, which an LLM can resolve far more efficiently than re-reading or traditional search, allowing the reader to then re-engage with the original text more effectively:

"I have, therefore, found it necessary to deny knowledge, in order to make room for faith."

- Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason

A famous, short, but often misunderstood quote in that everyone thinks its about faith in a religious sense, or about choosing irrational belief over empirical evidence (i.e., abandon scientific knowledge to embrace religious dogma), when really its about making room for moral + practical reasoning (thus, faith in a philosophical sense) in a world where pure speculative reason (knowledge) cannot definitively prove (or disprove) concepts like God, freedom, and immortality. I have included a couple screenshots of my feature's interpretation from simply asking it to explain in laymen terms. Apologies for the book quality!

Though the Earth, and all inferior Creatures be common to all Men, yet every Man has a Property in his own Person. This no Body has any Right to but himself. The Labour of his Body, and the Work of his Hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the State that Nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his Labour with, and joyned to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his Property. It being by him removed from the common state Nature placed it in, hath by this labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other Men. For this Labour being the unquestionable Property of the Labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joyned to, at least where there is enough, and as good left in common for others.

- John Locke's Second Treatise of Government


For this, the prompt I gave to the LLM was "Summarize the logical structure of this passage regarding property." The results are attached as screenshots.



I could also give examples of bridging knowledge gaps - for example, you read "Congress of Vienna" or "liminal spaces" and you want to quickly know about them. I could also give examples of confirmation of understanding - like asking whether a sentence is a supporting example of the narrator being unreliable when you think it is (or isn't). The point is to be able to do all this in a simple no-need-to-go-to-a-separate-tab manner. The result would be a substantial time-saver for those who are already using external LLMs for such tasks, or for those who just may want to potentially try something out to enhance their reading.

Ultimately, my intention was that this'd be a user-configurable option. That'd mean if one is concerned, they can simply choose not to enable or use it, and it wouldn't interfere with their existing Calibre experience. For those who find value in LLMs (and there is a growing number who do), it offers a streamlined + integrated way to utilize them.

Thank you again for your candid and thoughtful reply, rantanplan. It has provided me with valuable perspective, and I truly appreciate the engagement.